Strength of a Thousand Men
by IvanKaramazov
Summary: Takes place just before my larger story, Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, but no knowledge of the story is required to read. A Legion squad faces disaster North of Goodsprings.


Strength of a Thousand Men

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Hey, Karamazov here! Although this is meant to go with my larger story, Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, no knowledge of the story is required. It takes place just before and a little bit into the beginning of the story, and goes into further detail on a scene that was only touched on in the story. The story title is also the title of an amazing instrumental song by Two Steps From Hell that really inspired me to write this scene. Hope you enjoy!

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A faint buzzing sound was all that heralded the utter disaster that was to come.

The desert thus far had been quiet - too quiet. Always was there the rustling of desert creatures, a crow taking flight, flies swarming some kind of detritus, reptiles taking shelter beneath rocks. But there was no sound here, not even from the gentle footsteps of the small contubernium of eight Legionaries, for whom stealth was a priority. They were deep in enemy territory, just north of Goodsprings, headed further north to solidify the Legion's position with the Khans. Khans were tribals, and in many ways the Legion considered them vastly inferior, but they shared a common enemy. The Khans could be dealt with after the war with the NCR.

The silence unnerved Apuleius. Although he tried never to reflect on his childhood as a tribal, the words of his village elders now echoed in his ears: if the animals cannot go there, then neither can you. It was advice meant to help hunters or scavengers avoid the pockets of fatal radiation that dotted the barren landscape, but radiation didn't seem to be the issue here. They'd been walking for a few minutes now, and no one had broken out in hives, or even complained of a queasy stomach. No, there was a very different kind of danger lurking in this mountain pass, one that even the bright full moon did not help illuminate. Apuleius swore he could feel eyes watching him, following him. He kept his muscles loose and his hand on his blade, eager to prove himself.

About a year ago Apuleius had taken part in his first NCR raid, gotten his very first kill, and saved the life of his then-commander in the process. It was a good kill, he was told, an honorable one. He'd been rewarded. However, part of his reward had been a few months of special training learning how to maintain and operate guns, an utter waste of time, in his opinion. Apuleius preferred a blade, and the Legion looked down upon warriors who depended on guns, even if they were practical in battle. It had kept him off of the front lines for a while, and when he'd finished, he'd had to re-assimilate into a new unit - a unit that had seen disappointingly little action. Even now, there was no guarantee of glory to be gained. It was a stealth mission. If they conducted it properly, there would be no fighting at all. It made Apuleius grind his teeth together.

Even if it was a new unit, not all of the faces were entirely new to him. Cadmus, Orris, and Narius were old friends. The four of them had trained together when they had first been brought to Flagstaff from their defeated tribes and told they would be warriors. Titus and Thraseus he also knew from various patrols, and he'd heard great things about his commander, Decanus Demarcus. Apuleius was pleased with the group, confident in their courage and their ability as warriors. But nothing could have prepared them for the slaughter they were walking into.

The cazadores' wings buzzed so softly that they took the Legion contubernium completely by surprise. It was Narius who bore the consequence of that surprise. Before anyone was even aware of the imminent battle before them, a cazador's stinger pierced right through the armor on his back. It was his startled cry of pain that alerted the Legionaries to the danger.

They collectively drew their weapons, Apuleius a bit readier with his than the others were with theirs. At least a dozen glassy-eyed cazadores the size of dogs, with enormous orange wings and wicked stingers with a venom so toxic that Narius collapsed, unable to draw his weapon, unable to even stand. He continued to cry in pain, one of the strongest warriors Apuleius had ever known, reduced to a wide-eyed, screaming mess of writhing limbs.

The fight began. Apuleius drew first blood, hacking the head off of a cazador that flew for Thraseus. While he was pleased to have accomplished that, he was disturbed by the amount of force it had taken to accomplish the task. Apuleius knew his strength, knew he was stronger than most in his unit, and he had barely been able to sever the creature's neck. Sure enough, as the others began to swing at the cazadors, blade glanced off of exoskeleton. Titus stood there in shock, so shaken by the ineffectiveness of his own blade that he couldn't get his defenses up properly when the cazador attacked him in turn. He fell, also, screaming.

"Date omnibus!" Decanus Demarcus shouted. "Give every swing all your strength!"

He threw his blade into a cazador's neck and managed to break through the exoskeleton enough to kill the beast, although the head was barely even halfway severed. It crashed to the ground in front of Publius, who had made the mistake of trying to help Narius, grabbing him around the waist and trying to drag him to safety. But there was no such place. He received a cazador stinger straight through his temple for his efforts, which killed him instantly, no venom required.

That was when Decanus Demarcus gave the order to retreat.

"Recipite!" The Decanus called almost violently, as he reluctantly used his double-barreled gun to fire a round at a cazador charging him, and watched bullet and buckshot alike glance ineffectively off of the exoskeleton. "To the East, into the mountains!"

Apuleius didn't like running away, didn't like giving ground. But they were taking casualties at an unsustainable rate. Besides, the command had been given, the will of Caesar and his mighty Legion stated by the man they'd trusted to do so when they gave Decanus Demarcus his position. Apuleius obeyed unquestioningly, no matter how his stomach turned at the thought of doing so. The cries of the fallen, still alive, still suffering, followed the Legionaries as they ran.

As they fled, however, the cazadores fit in one final victim: Oris, who'd been covering Apuleius' back. As he fell, wide-eyed, shaking, frothing at the mouth, Apuleius caught him with one arm, wielding his machete in the other. He fell behind, his squad advancing without him. The cazadores were on top of him then, and Apuleius plunged his blade upwards into the black insectile torso above him with all his might, managing to break through the exoskeleton, if only just barely. He twisted his blade inside, and when he drew it out, he pulled innards out with it. The next cazador was upon him almost before his blade was out of the last, and he only just managed to catch the stinger on his blade and divert it inches from his face. He stole a brief glance down at his friend, despite the imminent danger, and found that Orris had died in his arms long ago. His veins turned black beneath his cold skin.

Then a ferocious, guttural roar shook the very sand beneath his feet, and it came from the direction his contubernium had fled in. There was nothing left to fight for here. Orris and Narius were dead. He rocketed away from the lifeless body in his arms and straight through the swarm of cazadores, cutting down only those in between him and his comrades. He couldn't kill every one of them; that would have taken too much time. But a powerful enough blow could send a cazador spinning away from him long enough to power through the swarm. That and a lucky hit on one of the imperceptibly fast wings of one cazador was enough to free him from the swarm that had surrounded him, that had seemed to seal his fate. The cazadores pursued their prey, and he led them like an army straight into a group of five wildly menacing deathclaws. This was the threat Apuleius's comrades had run into, the things whose roar had shaken the earth below him.

Deathclaws are terrifying from a distance. They're large, hulking creatures with claws like steel so long they drag along the ground by their feet, and a jawline of ragged teeth that didn't quite fit in their powerful maws. Up close, you can see the saliva drip from those teeth, see the blood encrusted on them from their last meal. The taste of the air becomes sharper just by seeing their claws. You can smell the death on them. These were observations, Apuleius knew, that few ever got the chance to relay.

Apuleius loved it.

Here it was, his opportunity to prove himself. This was no single NCR soldier, this was nothing that could be attributed to being in the right place at the right time. Five deathclaws stood before him, charging his squad, which fled back in his direction. They hit the ground, ducking under the six cazadores that survived yet, which surged straight into the onslaught of deathclaws. Their mighty claws had no trouble with the cazador's exoskeleton, although one of them was too slow and was stung. The beast died just as pathetically as Narius and Publius and Titus and Orris had. But four deathclaws still remained. Apuleius gripped his machete tightly in his right arm, confident in his ability to slay every one of them.

No.

Confident in the Legion's ability to slay every one of them.

Because as he charged headlong into the viable earthquake of the nine and ten foot tall reptilian giants that crashed towards him, it wasn't his own strength that fueled the beautiful, arching swing of his blade, slicing the tendons of the first beast's leg. It was the strength of thousands, the strength of the entire Legion. He fought for a cause, for the Legion, for Caesar; and all that power ran through him, the might of the many coursing into his every blade thrust. He had the Legion at his back, and he could do anything. There was no fear. He fought for the Legion, represented it. He was Legion. He was strong.

He rolled out of the way of the still-living, still dangerous beast as it buckled to the ground, and hacked his blade on its spinal column on the back of its neck once, twice, three times, all in quick succession before the next beast swung at him. Apuleius stepped into the swing. He still caught the force of the blow, but he made contact with the deathclaw's scaly inner arm and not its claws, and since he was still living he fought through the blunt pain of the blow. He slashed his machete against its gut, the highest Apuleius could reach, but it barely even drew blood. What it did succeed in doing was angering the beast, and its head shot down at Apuleius, the beast meaning to snap its powerful jaws around Apuleius' skull. It received his blade instead, which plunged into its brain through the inside of its mouth. Apuleius didn't even linger on the fact that he could have lost his arm, certain that he could fight the remaining deathclaws single-handed if need be. He was Legion.

If he had lingered, he would have lost his life. The speed at which he rejoined the fight, drawing the blade sharply out of the deathclaw above him, was essential. The remains of his squad was doing their best to fight, but they were only leaving scratches, and the remaining deathclaws had honed in on Apuleius as the biggest threat. He had two deathclaws on top of him now, no real way to kill them both with only one blade. So he shoved the dead deathclaw with all his might as he reclaimed his blade, adjusting its downward trajectory just enough to have it land on the deathclaw to his right.

The one to his left swung at him, and missed. Apuleius was not so unfocused. His first blow was effective and clean, a powerful stab to the area just above the creature's thigh that managed to clear the scaly skin, the leathery, thick muscle, and scraped along bone. Then, with even more strength than that thrust had taken, he slashed his blade sideways, opening the deathclaw's bowels and letting them spill upon the earth below. He accomplished it so quickly that the other deathclaw was still pinned by the time he turned to face it, and he destroyed its skull, hacking his machete downwards onto its scalp while avoiding the snapping jaws, which continued snapping, snapping, snapping, even after the sand turned red with blood and Apuleius' blade was drenched in brain matter.

Then the snapping, the thrashing, the fighting stopped. For a brief moment, everything was still. Apuleius turned to his squad, his contubernium, and saw in their eyes all he had ever wanted to see. Respect. They saw him as a valuable member of the Legion. That was all Apuleius had ever wanted, to serve the Legion to the best of his ability. To be a Legionary. And he was a Legionary. He could feel it in him, in his own strength, in the power of the entire Legion that fueled him.

But the peace lasted only a brief minute.

The battle had been anything but silent. Bare seconds had passed from the demise of the final deathclaw when an identical, guttural roar signaled the presence of more, many more. The rumbling, crashing footfalls of far more than five deathclaws spurred Decanus Demarcus into action.

"Recipite!" He repeated. "Recipite!"

But even as the contubernium obeyed his orders, as any Legion soldiers should, there was a hopelessness in the Decanus' eyes that spelled doom. Apuleius rested his hand briefly on the Decanus' shoulder.

"I will stay back." He offered. "Hold off as many as I can."

The Decanus looked sternly into the younger soldier's eyes, making sure he knew what this meant. Apuleius did know. He wouldn't make it out of this fight with his own life. But it didn't matter. He fought for Legion, he fought for a cause. That cause would live after him, and if he died serving it, then he was a part of it. He was Legion, and he would live as long as Legion did. He was immortal, invincible.

"You are a true Legionary." The Decanus said, grasping his shoulder briefly in turn. "Mars guide you."

And then the Decanus was gone, bringing up the rear as the only remaining members of the contubernium, Cadmus and Thraseus, fled. But they weren't fleeing for their own lives. Apuleius knew his comrades well. They were above the baser instincts of self-preservation - those instincts had been beaten out of them long ago. They were fleeing for the life of the mission. They still intended to solidify a position up near Red Rock Canyon, and they needed to be alive to do that. Their service to the Legion was to live, and Apuleius' was to die. He accepted that. He embraced it.

And when eight more towering, brutally charging deathclaws rounded the corner and came stampeding at him, he did not flinch, he did not falter. He raised his machete, the blade that was merely an extension of his arm, a blade he knew well from nearly a decade of training, and made a charge of his own.

It didn't matter to him that there were more deathclaws this time, or that they were closer together, no opportunity to take them on one at a time the way he had with the five previous to these. It didn't matter to him that it was hopeless, that it was impossible. As he stormed the writhing mass of mutated, betoothed, beclawed horrors, he made no plan of attack. He didn't question if he could do this. He simply...did. He slashed his machete, stabbed with it, pulled it out of flesh and plunged it in, hitting vital and non-vital points alike. Twist, pull, block, dodge, roll, up again. He couldn't think, he could barely even see - he fought so intensely and ferociously that his lungs couldn't catch their breath, and white stars flashed everywhere in his line of sight, blinding him. But he fought still. His machete, his muscles, they knew what to do. The Legion had trained him, worked him, every single day since taking him in after his tribe had been absolved into their ranks. It was Legion training that cut down deathclaw after deathclaw, Legion might behind each swing.

Apuleius was more than a man. He was a Legionary.

His machete, however, was just a machete. As he killed the seventh deathclaw, arcing his blade deep into the beast's backbone with one mighty blow, the blade became stuck in the spinal column. The handle broke off when Apuleius tried to ready his blade once more, and he was left holding nothing but tattered leather strips, facing yet one more deathclaw. It began to circle its prey, and though it was a beast, it seemed to revel in its certain victory.

But Apuleius was neither as breakable nor as mundane as his machete. He was not ready to surrender. Not now, not ever. So he circled with the beast, the way one does before a fistfight. He held his fists at the ready. And when the beast roared at him, a booming, shrieking thunder that stirred up the ground and sent bloody bits of its last meal flying from its teeth along with thick spittal, Apuleius roared back.

"AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHH!"

His bellow was so loud, so unsettlingly like the deathclaw's own roar, so full of might and fury, that more than half a mile away, Decanus Demarcus glanced back from the top of a distant ridge where he and the other Legionaries were crossing into apparent safety. And the Decanus himself saw Apuleius charge the deathclaw with his bare fists.

The downright insane gesture was not rewarded. The Decanus witnessed the powerful swipe of the deathclaw's clawed hand, and as Apuleius was blown back, caught air, the Decanus turned his back on the doomed Legionary and proceeded North before the deathclaw pursued them as well.

Apuleius sailed through the air, winded. For a brief moment, he was flying, and though it could have been the oxygen deprivation from the fight, he felt an odd elation about it, even in the face of certain death. Then he hit the cliff.

He'd had no air already, so he wasn't sure what it was that forced its way out of his lungs now that allowed him to make a pained grunting noise as he struck the rocks. But he didn't need air to fight, didn't need intact ribs to fight - and he didn't even think his ribs were broken, merely bruised. I can still do this, he thought to himself.

But he still had to fall. When he hit the cliff, he was two stories up in the air, and he didn't even realize it. When he came down, he braced himself for impact with the ground, prepared to roll straight back into the fight - but his landing was delayed, by a whole couple of seconds. He landed poorly, with much more force than he had been expecting. He felt fire run straight through his bones as his ankle snapped grotesquely sideways. His muscles spasmed, and his mind blanked. He couldn't move.

The deathclaw charged, jaw agape, leaping at Apuleius with its teeth. Apuleius registered the danger, registered that his life was about to end in the crunching and grinding and ripping of being devoured. He registered that he wouldn't die right away. That it would be painful. But still, he never flinched.

He knew he had to keep fighting. He was Legion. Maybe he would die, but he would not die laying down. He would die fighting, die a Legionary, die a hero.

And there it was. Just in front of him, his last hope, a final, desperate weapon. The deathclaw's feet left the ground, and it leaped toward him through the air, mouthfirst. Apuleius surged forward, forcing himself to put weight on his broken, ruined ankle, to take the step he needed to take towards the body of a dead cazador in front of him. He grabbed it in both hands and thrust it upwards into the deathclaw's heart.

The beast fell on top of him, and Apuleius nearly blacked out from the pain as his ankle was twisted in yet another impossible, frankly incorrect direction. The deathclaw howled and shrieked, a final, caterwauling wail escaping those jaws in spluttering bursts as froth dripped from between its teeth, and its veins turned black beneath its skin. It was a while before the convulsions stopped. The larger creature certainly lasted longer than Orris had, but it had lost control of its body, surrendered entirely to the throes of pain. It didn't try to kill Apuleius as it died, hardly even realizing he was there beneath it.

And then it was dead, and nothing moved, not even Apuleius. He felt two kinds of shock run through him. One, a medical kind induced by the break, a physiological response that traveled through his veins and paled his skin, fogged his mind. But the other was a more present shock: he couldn't believe he was alive. His enemies were dead, and he yet lived. He hadn't planned to. He hadn't planned on this. Granted, he hadn't done a lot of planning, or thinking, but he'd never have thought he would make it out of there alive.

His first thought was to catch up with his contubernium. But that was impossible. They had a good lead on him, and he had a hideously broken ankle. He hadn't known where exactly they were headed, or what their route was; only the Decanus had known that. And besides, he couldn't serve the Legion with a broken ankle. The best he could hope for from his comrades was a mercy killing, and that wasn't heroic.

He'd wanted to die here. He'd wanted to die a hero. Except somehow, at the same time, he had wanted to die undefeated. The two were contradictory, in many ways. He didn't know how to reconcile them.

But he couldn't wait here. That wasn't an option. Out in the open, anyone could come along and happen on him, and this was NCR territory. Bedecked in full Legion uniform, anyone who found him would turn him over to the NCR the moment they saw him. He would be interrogated, tortured. He had a high tolerance for pain, but he couldn't risk giving up valuable Legion secrets to NCR interrogators, couldn't risk the shame of capture. With a Herculean effort, he lifted the deathclaw off of him just enough to squirm out from under it, pushing himself along the ground with his good leg until he was clear of the corpse. He dropped it and scrambled to his hands and knees, catching his breath.

He didn't know where to go next. But he knew he had to go somewhere.

He hated to crawl, but his ankle was so hideously broken that there would be no walking on it. His arms shook as it occurred to him that he would never walk again - but he pushed those kinds of thoughts out of his mind. He couldn't afford them. He still had a job to do. He still had to die.

The smart thing to do would have been to seek out an enemy. Mars knows, the wasteland was full of them. But he stuck to the shadows as he spotted fiend encampments against the bleak horizon, hid behind rocks when geckos passed by, snuffling at the dirt in search of some scrap of food. He just couldn't bear to put aside the pride he had of the strength of the Legion, the pride he had in his uniform and the way he wore his cause into battle. He didn't want to be defeated.

At last he reached a place that looked abandoned. At least, he assumed the decrepit, boarded-up Poseidon gas station was uninhabited. The doors were boarded up, and there were cracked barrels of radiation strewn all about outside. Those had probably kept most at bay for centuries. Everyone knew that if those nuclear waste barrels cracked, the radiation that leaked from them was deadly even in the smallest amounts. But after the barrels cracked and were exposed to the air, the waste became less hazardous after time. Apuleius knew this because, as a tribal, he and some of the other village boys had played around some cracked barrels during their spare time. His mother had spoken with him on the matter, making sure he knew to avoid cracked barrels as a rule, though the ones they played by were safe. Apuleius shivered and felt nauseous at the memory. He hated thinking of his time as a tribal, hated memories of his ignorant tribe and his ignorant tribal mother. But he used that lesson now, noticing the rust around the cracks on the barrels, the way the waste itself had crusted over, dried up. Even if it was still radioactive, it was certainly no longer lethal. And even if it was, Apuleius found himself thinking, all the better. He was trying to die anyway.

But he couldn't wait around for radiation that probably wasn't strong enough to kill him, and he couldn't remain in the open where the NCR might find him. So he braced himself against the walls outside the station and pried the boards from the door with his bare fingers, bloodying his hands but succeeding, in the end. He dragged the boards inside with him, discarding them on the ground by the door.

They landed next to a gun.

It was a shotgun, single-barreled, the kind the traders usually used to guard caravans. Apuleius seated himself next to it and felt the irony wash over him in great, detestable waves. Here it was. It was too perfect, the signs were too clear. He had received gun training for this express purpose, hadn't he? His superiors had endowed him with the knowledge in hopes that he would use it to kill enemies, but Mars worked in more brutal ways than even they did, Apuleius figured. He would use his months of gun training, his reward for good work, to end his life.

This end didn't satisfy him either, if he was being honest. But it was the best way available to him. He wouldn't be defeated. He would still die a hero, having saved his contubernium. He wouldn't be handed to the NCR, poked and prodded and manipulated, wouldn't risk betraying the Legion. The shame of suicide paled in comparison to the shame of capture or the shame of defeat. There was a precedent for Legionaries falling on their swords rather than submit to capture. So Apuleius reached out and grasped the gun in his shamefully shaking fingers.

Painstakingly, he turned it on himself. It was awkward, unwieldy. The barrel was too long, the trigger too far away. Guns weren't meant to be used like this, weren't designed for this purpose. He had to work around the logistic difficulties. He put butt end of the gun on the ground and grasped the dangerous end in his teeth, one hand steadying the barrel and one arm extending, stretching, all the way down to the trigger. The metal barrel felt cool against his lips. He sat there for a few moments with the gun in his mouth, breathing heavily. Sweat trickled down his brow.

He pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The trigger clicked mechanically, and he tried it again. Still nothing. Had he done something wrong? Did he need to cock it first? He pulled the gun out of his mouth and examined it, trying to figure it out. He hadn't trained with this exact model, and to be honest, he hadn't paid that much credence to his training anyway. Guns weren't as respectable as blades, and he'd planned on fighting with a blade whenever possible. But now he needed that training, and he wasn't sure where he could have gone wrong.

His stomach turned over as he suddenly realized what the problem most likely was. He checked the chamber. Empty. There was no ammunition.

He searched the rest of the gas station, combing it for anything that might help. A blade, some ammo, anything. But nothing surfaced.

He needed a new plan of action. It appeared as though Mars wasn't quite done with him yet. He was meant to live, at least for a little while longer, though Apuleius couldn't fathom the purpose. And this time, when he combed the gas station, he searched for food. Water.

He spent several days holed up in that place. It was hard to know for sure how many, since he couldn't see the sun rise or fall, but by his judgement it was four days. Four days of darkness, of hardly moving. Four days opening centuries-old packets of non-perishable food and gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg. Four days of gripping that useless profligate shotgun every time something stirred outside. Four days waiting for the NCR to come, four days of imagining the tortures they'd inflict on him.

And then, a swathe of light cut into his darkness, nearly blinding him. There was a figure silhouetted there, in the doorway, a feminine one, though she wore bulky clothing. He was sure his time had come. All the NCR terrors he'd had days to think up surged to the front of his mind, and fear pumped through him like poison in his veins as the intruder felt her way along the shelves, looking for supplies. Would they peel of his skin? Inject him with cazador venom, then clean his blood with antivenom, endlessly on repeat until he spoke? Really, the worst pain Apuleius could imagine was simply someone touching his ankle. He prayed this intruder would find what she was looking for and leave.

But she didn't. He cursed himself for dragging everything to where he could reach it. If she had found what she was looking for, she might have left. Instead, she explored the rest of the gas station - and came face to face with him.

His lip trembled as he pointed the useless gun at her, and his eyes widened in terror, but he tried to keep his reactions in check all the same. He just couldn't see a way out of this. The girl in front of him didn't look threatening, but she would surely run to the authorities in moments. He couldn't stop her. He couldn't kill her. He couldn't even kill himself. Apuleius forcefully choked back a shameful whimper.

How could Mars want this for him? Apuleius would have preferred anything to the shame and pain of capture. Surely there had to be some higher plan.

The girl in front of him didn't look startled, or disturbed, by the gun. In the shadowy lighting, he thought he could see tear streaks on her dark skin, but she didn't look very upset now. She certainly didn't seem afraid. Her eyes landed on the water bottles next to him.

"If you're going to shoot me, shoot me." She said after a long pause. "Otherwise, I'm going to take one of those bottles of water behind you."

She had the audacity to push the barrel of his gun aside, then, and lean forward to grasp one of the bottles. Apuleius hardly dared move. But on its way to the bottle, her hand changed course as she sighted his broken ankle. She grasped it expertly, suddenly.

He yanked back his leg. It hurt immensely, incomprehensibly, to do, but he was sure whatever she was about to do would hurt more.

"Get out of here, profligate." He growled. "You can take the water, but then get out. Get out or I'll shoot you."

"You do what you think you have to do," she said calmly, "and I'll do what I think I have to do. I'm a doctor. I'm going to fix your leg, if I can. If you held still it would make this much easier."

As though that made it any better. She was still a Westerner, still a profligate, still an NCR citizen. She would fix his leg and then turn him over to the NCR in the same breath. He could expect no loyalty from her. And he wasn't about to accept charity from this wench.

"Why the hell would you do that?" He spat at her. "Profligate whore."

"If you feel so strongly about it, then shoot me. Otherwise, let me do my job."

Well, she had him there. He couldn't shoot her. He couldn't do a damn thing. If she wanted to stick pins and needles into his ankle for fun or do a rain dance on his spine, he couldn't stop her.

"I won't pay you." He tried, hoping that all profligates were equally motivated by money.

But she acted as though he hadn't spoken. She examined his ankle with delicate fingers that were surprisingly gentle. She'd clearly done this before. The girl frowned and stood, glancing around. There was little else in the gas station, whatever she was looking for. She disappeared briefly into the small bathroom and returned with something small and thin in her hands, but in the lighting, Apuleius couldn't make out what it was.

"You're brave, aren't you?" She said, but not condescendingly. "This is going to hurt, but know I'm not attacking you. Alright?"

"What are - ?"

And with that, the girl grasped the break in both her hands and broke it all over again with a horrible, sickening crunch. Apuleius screamed, pulling the trigger of his useless gun over and over again. Of course, nothing came of that. If she hadn't been scared of the gun before, she certainly wouldn't be now that she knew it was empty. He cursed himself for his stupidity. But the pain - it was still so bad, still so piercing. He gasped for breath and sucked in his scream, trying to keep silent, to remain composed, but Mars it hurt so much. His eyes watered with dread. This was what his life had in store for him now. How long would he have to endure this kind of treatment in NCR camps? Weeks? Months? Years? Surely death would take him before that.

"Sorry," she apologized utterly insufficiently, "but the bone was healing back crooked. It needed to be re-set."

Then she brought the object she had taken from the bathroom into the light, and Apuleius saw what it was. One of the West's abominable chems, a healing stimulant of some kind. The Legion did not view chems fondly. Apuleius wanted nothing to do with it. He yanked his ankle back from her fingers, which made to inject the needle into his flesh.

"Get your poison drugs away from - ach!"

Pulling away had not been a clever idea at all. His ankle shifted once more, this time so painfully his muscles slackened without his telling him to, his motor functions utterly out of his control. He dropped the gun, his mind reaching some new level of pain. But before he could even get used to that level, another spiking flame of agony shot through him as the profligate girl made some other twist to his leg, putting it back the way it had been before he'd tried to move away. A groan escaped his lips without his consent. She injected the chem into his leg.

His first wild, pain-induced reaction was to imagine his veins turning black the way Orris' had done, and he waited for the pain of cazador venom in his veins, for his muscles to spasm and froth to issue from his mouth. But it didn't happen. His ankle felt slightly uncomfortable from the chem, like it had fallen asleep, and was otherwise unaffected by the drug. But he still despised having it inside him, being forced to submit to the demeaning and offensive Western practices that were outlawed by Legion, to have it coursing through his very blood.

"What..." he wheezed, "have...you...done..."

The profligate stood, brushing her hands on her suspenders.

"I just saved your life." She said bitterly. "Don't, you know, thank me or anything."

"Profligate...whore..."

She rolled her eyes and at last grabbed one of the waters, making for the one-person restroom and closing the door behind her. Apuleius was left alone to agonize over what would happen next. He would be brought to the NCR, tortured, humiliated, abused, mocked. He had hoped he could handle the pain of interrogation, but the pain of healing, apparently, had nearly done him in. He couldn't allow his fears to control him, however. He was a Legionary, he was better than that. So he clung to the next most powerful emotion: rage. He hated the poison running through his system, hated the girl who was about to hand him over to the NCR.

"Do you realize what you've done?" He barked at her as she exited the restroom after a few minutes.

She'd changed drastically. She'd cleaned her face, and her skin was now several shades lighter than he had thought it was. There was no longer any evidence of tears, and her hair was in less disarray than it had been before. If they'd been passing as strangers, he might not have recognized her.

"Yeah, I just fixed you up. For free." She said dismissively.

"You've poisoned me with the remnants of the old world!"

"Oh, be a fucking man about it, will you?" She snapped at him, looking personally offended.

He was taken aback by her tone. Regardless of their situational positions, she was still a woman. Shouldn't she bit a little less, well, vulgar? A little less confrontational? More decorative? That was how most of the Legion slave women were. But he supposed 'vulgar' went hand in hand with 'profligate.'

"You should be walking by tomorrow morning." She informed him.

"Why?" He sneered bitterly. "So I can be escorted to an NCR military base on my own two feet? Interrogated? Tortured to death? Well, I won't talk. I won't give in. You're wasting your time. You should have just killed me, prof - "

" - ligate whore, I know." She interrupted drolly. "I'm not turning you into the NCR or anything, so calm down. I'm a doctor. I don't take sides."

That brought Apuleius' already unsteady heart rate to a complete stutter. Could it really be possible? Did she really not intend to give him to the NCR? He was doubtful. He curled and uncurled his fingers around the shotgun.

"Then why bother with me, if not to turn me in?"

She shrugged, looking demeaningly down at him.

"Even the best of us make mistakes." And with that, she made to leave, dropping another water bottle into the pocket of her suspenders next to some of that disgusting Blamco Mac n' Cheese Apuleius had avoided at all costs.

And just like that, Apuleius knew what he had to do. If he had a guide, and if he really would be able to miraculously walk as early as tomorrow morning, he might stand a chance of making it back to Cottonwood Cove. Of reclaiming his place among the Legion. At that moment, laying sprawled on the ground, vulnerable, he was the weakest he'd ever been, and it stood in such stark contrast to how invincible he'd felt fighting in the name of the Legion. He'd give anything to have that again, just one more battle, one more fight in which he knew he could not really die. He could barter with this profligate, give her protection on the road in exchange for guidance in these strange lands, and he could drag himself back to glory.

And for the first time since that deathclaw had landed on him four days ago, Apuleius had hope. Not hope that he would live, or escape pain, or be reunited with his comrades. Hope that he might once more fight with the intoxicating power of being a Legionary, of having a cause; that he might once more fight with the strength of a thousand men behind his back.

* * *

Date omnibus - roughly, 'give everything'

Recipite - a command, 'retreat'

Contubernium - the smallest organized unit of soldiers in the traditional Roman Army, composed of eight legionaries, the equivalent of a modern squad (I figured it would be a part of the Fallout world's Legion because Decani are mentioned and named in-game)

Decanus - a commander of contubernium. Interesting side note: Decanus means 'chief of ten,' even though the contuberniums they led consisted of only eight soldiers. This is because a contubernium traditionally also had two servants traveling with the soldiers to support them. The contubernium in this story lacks the traditional servants because none of the Legion war parties in the Fallout world seemed to have servants with them.

And that's it. Please review, I really appreciate feedback, especially since this story had less dialogue in it than I'm used to writing. I'm not sure how it turned out. If you have time, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!

\- Karamazov


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